The Bees Knees at The Denver Botanic Gardens - Adventures in Macro Bee Photography

I've just started playing around with some macro photography. I'm not sure why it took me so long to stumble onto macro photography, but it's opened up a whole new world of photography subject matter.

Even an inexpensive DSLR camera can produce amazing results using this technique with a very minor investment(less than $30).

All photos in this post are taken from the same shot at different zoom levels.

The Bees Knees!

It's legs are so full of pollen!!!!!

I purchased a lens reverser as well as an aperture locker so that I could take a standard kit lens, reverse it on my camera body and turn it into a new tool for my photography kit. I also bought and have been experimenting with some inexpensive barrel tube extenders, but I did not use these for this picture. Lens tube extenders decrease the necessary distance between the end of your lens and the subject, making it much easier to capture and focus an image in your viewfinder.

German Black Bee

Using a reversed lens can be tricky. Even at f22 the focal length is very shallow. even the bee's head is too far away to be in focus.

With the lens reverser attached to the camera, you lose the ability to autofocus, and because the lens is going on backwards, the camera can also no longer electronically control the lens aperture.

Most modern zoom lenses close their aperture automatically when you remove them from your camera, so you end up with very little light coming into the camera. You can fix this with an aperture lock ring that fits on your reversed lens.

This lens coupled with the amazing megapixel count for the D850 allows me to zoom WAY in, which is great for seeing all of the grains of pollen collected on this bee's legs and body.

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Details for the camera geeks

Camera: D850
Lens: 8mm equivalent using a reverser ring on a Nikon AF-S 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 G II DX VR (standard DX kit lens) with aperture lock ring.
Shot at: ISO 2800 8mm f/22 1/1600
no flash (bright sunlight conditions at high noon), handheld
Photo taken at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

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